Cuomo names appointees to state education reform commission

When Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced in January that he would convene a commission to set a course for reforming New York’s schools, insiders said many members would likely come from out of state.

That wasn’t true when Cuomo revealed the composition of the commission in Albany today. All but a handful of the 20 commission members are based in New York, and about half are based in New York CIty.

But the commission is still a far cry from the last panel Cuomo convened, a “think tank” of educators and advocates who advised the state in its bid to escape some federal accountability measures. Few of its members work in organizations that interact directly with children, even fewer are advocates, and there are no district representatives. There is also no parent advocate on the commission, even it is being asked to devise strategies to increase parent engagement.

Instead, commission members are drawn from the highest levels of state government, the state and city university systems, and nonprofit organizations. They include State Education Commissioner John King, Assembly Education Committee Chair Catherine Nolan, and SUNY Chancellor Nancy Zimpher.

“It’s very blue-ribbon,” said CUNY education professor David Bloomfield about the panel’s composition. “The establishment nature of the commission makes it less likely that they will come up with anti-establishment recommendations.”

Working under the leadership of chair Richard Parsons, a former head of CitiGroup and Time Warner; and top Cuomo deputies, they will have seven months to make recommendations about how to boost student achievement and make education spending more efficient. Cuomo said today that he wanted the recommendations to form “an action plan” for his administration.

The commission’s tasks, set by Cuomo in an executive order, include finding ways to improve teacher recruitment and evaluation, proposing strategies to boost test scores, scrutinizing education funding, figuring out how schools should use technology, and examining issues facing urban and rural students.

The commission is also being asked to consider streamlining the state’s education system to reduce expenses, an issue that is unlikely to affect New York City but could be potentially explosive upstate, where there are more than 700 districts with their own staffs, services, and sports teams.

Timothy Kremer, executive director of the New York State School Boards Association, decried the lack of local school board representation on the commission.

“The perspective of those who are elected by their communities to provide leadership and direction, oversee millions in taxpayer dollars, and make decisions about programs that impact students for the rest of their lives ought to have a place at the table,” Kremer said in a statement.

One commission member actually is a school board member, technically: Eduardo Martí, a CUNY official, is a mayoral appointee to the city’s unelected school board, the Panel for Educational Policy. Other appointees also have close connections to the Bloomberg administration, including Irma Zardoya, a former superintendent who now runs the city’s principal training program, and Geoffrey Canada, CEO of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

But other members have been more critical about the city’s and state’s education reform agendas. Randi Weingarten, the former UFT president who now heads the American Federation of Teachers, is on the panel but was not in Albany today to announce its formation. Another member, Michael Rebell, led a successful effort to sue the state over funding inequities and has hinted that another lawsuit could be on the horizon.

The panel will “meet several times and gather input and information from across the state” before submitting recommendations by Dec. 1, according to a press release from Cuomo’s office. That timing would allow Cuomo to incorporate recommendations he wishes to follow into his State of the State address and legislative agenda in 2013.

Philissa Cramer is managing editor of Chalkbeat New York. She founded GothamSchools, Chalkbeat New York's predecessor, in September 2008 and previously launched Insideschools’ first news blog. At Insideschools, she also visited and reviewed schools all over New York City and contributed to the third edition of New York City’s Best Public High Schools. Philissa has also written about education issues for the Village Voice, the Nation, and the New Republic. She studied the history and policy of education at Brown University, where she was an editor of the Brown Daily Herald student newspaper.